I've been without reliable Internet access for the past couple of days, but now that I'm home, I have time to do one last post about James and Jeff's Powder Adventure Annex.
Since the beginning of the trip, we frequently would praise an epic run (of which there were many) with the refrain, "this is adventure skiing." Ken coined the phrase, but it falls to me to define it. I am tempted to follow Justice Potter Stewart's example and just leave it with "I know it when I see it," because it's hard to pin down the precise meaning. Adventure skiing, as we meant it, is frequently challenging, but that is not the main criteria. Outer Limits at Killington, while very challenging and fun, is too populated to be "adventure skiing." Conversely, many of the powder stashes we found in remote glades were dead easy, but obviously adventure runs. So, I suppose that adventure skiing describes slopes that appear to be discovered by few, and most importantly, give the impression of being close to how the mountain would have been if we had hiked up to the top for an intrepid run 100 years ago.
Friday was, as expected, a perfect, blue-sky powder day at Vail. After a couple of runs skiing untracked, foot-deep powder on the far skier's left of China bowl, we spent the rest of the day at Blue Sky Basin, blasting through the bottomless powder on Steep and Deep, Heavy Metal, the Divide, and any adjacent trails.
It seemed that the entire Denver/Boulder metropolitan area decided to get a jump on the holiday weekend with a trip to Vail; each one surprised that their city mates had done the same. Even so, the lift lines were never long enough to be a problem, and the slopes were empty as ever. Jeff brought a huge bag of Twizlers with him, offering them to our chair companions on the ride up, so we were very popular.
Everyone was concerned about the expected crush of skiers the next day, some predicting, with apparent authority, that it would be the busiest day in the history of Colorado resorts. So when we visited Winter Park/Mary Jane on Saturday, we braced ourselves for an extremely crowded day. To everyone's surprise, including the lift attendents that we spoke with, it was fine. In fact, it was less crowded than Vail the day before, and one lift attendent let us know that the previous Saturday had been busier. Go figure.
We skiied mostly in the bumps at Mary Jane, which is a deserving mecca for mogul skiiers, and they were in great shape. The mountain hadn't seen much fresh snow in the past week, and it showed on the groomed slopes, but we avoided those anyway, so the snow conditions were fine. We ventured into a few sparse glades, which were great, and the locals let us know that the denser trees, which we typically didn't attempt, were in good shape.
Early in the day, we ventured up the Panoramic Lift, which ends at the 12,000 foot summit. As we arrived, the patrollers dropped the rope for Vasquez Cirque, a high alpine playground which had be closed for days. The sign at the entrance for the Cirque indicated that it contained extreme terrain only, with 50 degree pitches and cliffs. Unsure if they meant only 50 degree pitches and cliffs, I was ready to give it a miss. Jeff, however, was already up through the gates, and I didn't have the heart to stop him. Before reaching skiable terrain, we had to skate/hike along a flat, approximately half-mile cat walk along the summit ridge. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but at 12,000 feet, hard work. Along the Cirque side of the ridge, we glanced several chutes leading into the bowl. They seemed unskiable, and showed no tracks to prove otherwise. Eventually, we reached Alphabet Chutes, which recommended themsleves by appearing a bit less than vertical, and having a small group of skiiers and boarders looking over the edge, ready to attempt a descent. We all stood at the precipice, waiting for the someone else to make the leap first. After a little while, Jeff took the bait. Having seen proof that it could be done, I followed him.
As Dan can contest by his foray into Lover's Leap, slopes like these always look steeper than they ski, and the perfect snow made it easy to link jump turns all they way down. Looking back up toward the rim caused an "I skied that?" feeling of vertigo, but it was lot's of fun. The run eventually funneled into a steep, almost completely untracked pine glade. It was very dense and steep, and reaching into the snow with my pole I could not hit bottom. The trees were a bit close for my taste, so I kept thinking, "I wish we had taken a different path down; Dan and Ken would love this." Adventure skiing.
The view back up from halfway down an Alphabet Chute
Alphabet Chutes from the bottom. We skied the left chute.
1 comment:
I just read James's entry for his last 2 days out here in Skier's Land. Of course I won't try to compete with his writing - those damn English majors - his post reads like a Ski magazine article. Anyhow I was glad to see they finished spectacularly. And that he attempted to define what Ken and I were looking for when we planned this trip - Adventure Skiing! So I'm grateful to Ken for giving this quest of ours a name and for James' definition/description.
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